


a lightning bolt that splits your bones

by ourdarkspirits



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourdarkspirits/pseuds/ourdarkspirits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard" </p>
<p>-Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch</p>
            </blockquote>





	a lightning bolt that splits your bones

He’d told her that he didn’t trust her and that was true. Or at least it was true when he’d told her. He’d told her that he liked her too and that was also true. Now he wasn’t quite sure what to think.

From the moment he’d met her, Cassandra Cillian had occupied his thoughts. He hadn’t been able to classify it, other than that he was hyper aware of her, and her hallucinations, her limited time. 

He knew why she had betrayed them. He did. She had wanted a chance at life. She had wanted to stop staring death in the face. Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Didn’t mean it hadn’t scared him off. He had thought maybe he’d ask her out on a date. He liked the way she saw the world, the way she seemed to dance through life. When he saw her with Lamia, well, it had been a betrayal, a betrayal from someone who was supposed to value that place that had made them feel normal, not outcast. 

He couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same thing in her place. He wanted to say that he wouldn’t betray the others if he was staring death in the face. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t, but you don’t know until you’re there.

He had meant to distance himself. He really didn’t want to get hurt again and he didn’t trust her. At least not with the important stuff. So why was it that every time they were working together he seemed to gravitate towards her?

He told himself he was worried about her. He had after all told her he liked her, and that was true. So when she had hallucinations that made her collapse he wanted to be there to catch her, to ground her. He told himself that was all it was.

He didn’t think about all the times standing in the Annex, when she was in danger of collapse, that he stood close enough to touch her. He didn’t think of how close he had stood to her after she was no longer under the control of the Apple of Discord. If he thought about that, he might have had to rethink how he felt about Cassandra, and he most definitely didn’t want that.

No, he told himself, he liked things just the way they were. It was safe and it was easy. Except, maybe it wasn’t so easy anymore. 

So after they had failed to save a town that had been trapped by one of Nikola Tesla’s failed projects, he distanced himself from all of them for a time. It wasn’t about Cassie, he told himself. It wasn’t about how he had hurt her and in the process gotten hurt himself. He told himself he was honoring Mabel’s memory, doing what she had always longed to do for 130 years.

So why, after they had all graduated to full librarian status, had he chased after her, gone to Lima with her, solved a mystery with her? Not because he cared for her, not that. No he figured she’d want a little help. After all, even Flynn had a guardian. 

After a while he admitted to himself, that he had trusted her for a long time. She had saved their lives too many times not to have earned his trust back and then some. It took him a while longer to admit that he cared for her, and not just in a friendly way, that the only thing hold him back, was the expiration date constantly looming over her. So of course it took him even longer to admit any of that to Cassandra Cillian, but when he did he was rewarded with a smile brighter than the sun, and more beautiful than any of the art he had studied all his life. 

What Jake Stone had forgotten, was you don’t choose to fall in love. No, it’s more like a lightning bolt that splits your bones, sudden and altogether not what you would have chosen for yourself, and certainly not safe and easy.


End file.
